Nostr is an open social media protocol empowering lots of software such as this client. The experience is kind of like Twitter except that you control your own account, and you can post to many different independent places called "relays". People are finding many additional uses for NOSTR that go far beyond micro-blogging or chatting, but this client is focused on those.
- **Debian**: See the [releases](https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip/releases) area for a file named something like `gossip-VERSION-ARCH.deb`
- **Any Linux**: See the [releases](https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip/releases) area for a file named something like `gossip.VERSION.AppImage`
- **Microsoft Windows**: See the [releases](https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip/releases) area for a file named something like `gossip.VERSION.msi`
- **MacOS**: See the [releases](https://github.com/mikedilger/gossip/releases) area for a file named something like `gossip-VERSION-Darwin-arm64.dmg` or `gossip-VERSION-Darwin-x86_64.dmg`
With `pacman` on **Arch Linux**: [`gossip`](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gossip) or [`gossip-git`](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gossip-git) or [`gossip-bin`](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gossip-bin) on the AUR
With [homebrew](https://brew.sh/) on **MacOS** or **Linux**: `brew install gossip` from [`homebrew-core`](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core), or for more options `brew install nostorg/nostr/gossip` from [`homebrew-nostr`](https://github.com/nostorg/homebrew-nostr)
- **Desktop Portable**: Gossip is designed to run on desktop computers, and is portable to Windows, MacOS and Linux.
- **Gossip Model**: The Gossip Model was named after this client, because gossip never used a simple list of relays. From day one it tried to find posts of people that you follow wherever they are most likely to be, based on those people's relay lists as well as half a dozen other heuristics. Today multiple clients use a similar model, focused around ([NIP-65](https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/65.md)). Gossip connects to all relays necessary to cover everybody you follow, while also trying to listen to the minimum number of relays necessary to do that (considering that there is overlap, and that people generally post to multiple relays). It also dynamically adjusts to relays being down or disconnecting.
- **Secure Key Handling**: Gossip handles private keys as securely as reasonable (short of hardware tokens), keeping them encrypted under a passphrase on disk, requiring that passphrase on startup, and zeroing memory. This shouldn't really be a point of difference but few other clients bother.
- **Avoids Browser-Tech**: Gossip avoids web technologies (other than HTTP GET and WebSockets which are necessary for nostr). Web technologies like HTML parsing and rendering, CSS, JavaScript and the very many web standards, are complex and represent a security hazard due to such a large attack surface. This isn't just a pedantic or theoretical concern; people have already had their private key stolen from other nostr clients. We use simple OpenGL-style rendering instead. It's not as pretty but it gets the job done.
- **Performant**: Gossip aims towards being highly performant, using the LMDB database, the rust language, and coding architectures with performance always in mind. Unless you have quite old hardware, the network speed will probably be your bottleneck.
- **High user control**: Gossip has (at the time of writing) 57 different settings. When the right value is uncertain, I pick a reasonable default and give the user the mechanism to change it.
- **Privacy Options**: in case someone wishes to remain secret they should use Gossip over Tor - I recommend using QubesOS do to this. But you could use Whonix or even Tails. Don't just do it on your normal OS which won't do Tor completely. Gossip provides options to support privacy usage such as not loading avatars, not necessarily sharing who you follow, etc. We will be adding more privacy features.
Gossip uses rustls by default. This is an SSL library in rust, which gets compiled into the binary, meaning we won't have issues trying to find your system SSL library or system CA certificates. It also means:
- Gossip will fail to negotiate SSL with servers that don't have any strong ciphersuites. This is a feature, but not one that everybody wants.
- Gossip may not compile on hardware that the `ring` crypto library does not yet support.
If you wish to switch to your native TLS provider, use the following compile options:
Gossip by default does not include the CJK font because it is larger than all other languages put together, and most gossip users don't recognize those characters. If you do recognize such characters, you can compile in that font with:
Anyone interested in replacing the GUI with something much better, or keeping it as egui but making it much better, would be greatly appreciated.
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, shall be licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.
I'd prefer if you trusted `mike@mikedilger.com` higher than my public key at this point in time since key management is still pretty bad. That is the inverse of the normal recommendation, but my private key has not been treated very carefully as I never intended it to be my long-term keypair (it just became that over time). Also, I fully intend to rollover my keys once gossip supports the key-rollover NIP, whatever that is (or will be).
You can tip me at my Bitcoin Lighting address: <decentbun13@walletofsatoshi.com> == lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhkgetrv4h8gcn4dccnxv563ep
